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General Exalted Thread

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Unbanshee said:
If it helps, consider 'it's bad' to be the distillation of years and years of forum conversations about every possible mechanical topic regarding 2e that's already gone.

'kill yourself and become a ghost' is never ever an answer in exalted, because the game is EXALTED, not ghost: the gothic. You can play ghosts because they put the rules out there, but they aren't actually meant as a PC option, especially when everyone else is playing exalts. An exalt that kills themselves and becomes a ghost becomes an NPC. That's why it's bad.
Taking the charm that turns you into a yozi is bad because it kills your character and turns the resulting NPC into a clone of the yozi. Ergo dead. Refer to above to see why it's bad.
RotSE was garbage. Flat out. It was badly written garbage scraped up from the bottom of the barrel to close out the 2e line and all the fluff and mechanics were trash. You can't pull out garbage mechanics that were nigh universally panned and expect anyone to take them seriously.
BWC's devil tiger path was a giant cyst on infernal homebrew the instant it was released. It was the king of all the gnarly cysts that threaded through infernals and it was a great big angry one that quivered with pus and infection. It was pushed out as the one true path for elder infernals but if you wanted to go through with it you had to clear an entire custom charm tree with your ST. The only times I've seen it happen is when people start with it and all their charms, which is not the standard gaming experience. Therefore bad.
GWM is silly because it's silly and requires charmshare which everyone sees as sillly and detrimental to the game.

We don't bother explaining all this because we and others have explained it all before and in greater detail.
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It is not always easy to find discussions about specific aspects of things.

The die (and maybe become a ghost) trick technically works, but it isn't the optimal solution because most characters want to live.

The "Yozi Cosmic Principle" doesn't exactly remove your self.
It removes your charms that aren't from that yozi and your exaltation, applies the greater imperfection of that yozi, and gives you a massive mote pool. It doesn't really result in personality death. It doesn't force you to get any specifc
"(Yozi) Glory Incarnate" is the charm that gives you the memories of everyone else who learnt that charm, it doesn't say you can't recognize if they are yours or someone elses. This one might result in personality death, depending upon your interpretation.

"The book was badly written". This explains why something might have a lot of poorly balanced stuff, but it doesn't explain if any specific thing is poorly balanced or not.

Wouldn't that homebrew issue be present in any charm that requires making your own thing?
Also (IIRC) technically you don't need to spend the XP you get from cannibalizing Yozi charms, it's optional. So you could spend it on something else that isn't homebrew.
The charm that allows you to swap out stuff, is the first one in that heretical sequence.



Your thing about the raksha charms doesn't really make sense.
So let me give a kind of metaphor.
In the game D&D 3.5, spell casters like cleric or wizard are "broken". Their versaility, and certain spells like Polymorph and gate contribute to this. But not everything that wizards do is broken. Despite being a wizard spell, "Fireball" is not really broken.
It's the same principle here. Charm share is broken due to certain options it grants you. But because something is accessible only with charmshare, doesn't necessarily mean that it is broken.
 
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cjl said:
Can anyone please recommend some good, currently updating exalted fics or quests on this forum that have been running for some time?
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An Offer She Couldn't Refuse, by our very own @Pale Wolf. The scholarly girl Aindriu is taken by slavers to be sold in Nexus, but along the way, she is visited by powers with greater designs for her, and she Exalts as one of the Green Sun Princes. Unique by Sufficient Velocity standards for being a pure Exalted fic.
 
Accelerator said:
I don't care how skilled you are, but you're not going to be able to assemble an airjet or ferrari within your garage.
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There was a Kiwi, John Britten, who built a motorcycle in his garage, and then with it won multiple international motorcycle competitions and set multiple speed records.

I'd think building the best motorcycle in the world, from scratch, in your garage, might be an example of Craft 5.
 
Accelerator said:
Ok, i had an idea, but...

How does one show craft 5 in the modern world?

I mean, in the modern world, its easy to find high craftsmanship. The phone i'm using is enough.

In the bronze ages, its easy. The one who forges the perfect sword. The one who produces wondrous arms and armour is craft 5

What about in modern? I mean, there's lots of mass produced stuff. But i don't think thats the right course to take.
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Engineering in general should fall under Craft. Many modern craftsmen spend their lives drawing up blueprints for things that will be produced by assembly lines, work crews, or machines.

The greatest architect in the world may well never have built anything bigger than their own hands with their own hands, and the world's best car designer might not know how to operate an assembly line. The Craft Charmset would probably need some tweaks to accommodate the teamwork-heavy nature of modern craftsmanship, but the Ability itself should work fine.
 
Frankly, you're better off modeling Craft not as "what is humanly possible", because no system can possibly contain all the known universe, it will ultimately always be a flawed copy at best. You're much better off deciding that, "my system should model Rennaisance-style visionaries who need patronage for their arts and crafts" or "my system should model the advantages of automation over individual craftsmanship" and so on. A system reflects ideas and themes, never reality.
 
I don't really agree. Nothing's perfect, but sometimes a flawed copy of reality is better than a flawed copy of a specific idea or theme.
 
I have heard that the portrayal of the UCS, in glories to the most high makes his depiction too whitewashed.

What part of it actually did that?
IIRC stuff like his Virtues are still rather amoral (rather than moral or immoral), like how losing a game of tic tac toe would count as violating his Valor.

I also have heard complaints about the errata he got there, but I don't remember what it was.
 
I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's impossible to not design a system that communicates specific ideas about how the world works (or how you think it should work in the context of the system), this is basic narrative paradigm theory. Ultimately, we can't replicate reality, we can create approximations and models except we already do that, that's called natural science and we need supercomputers to run it and thousands of years of discovery to approximate this limited understanding we have now and it's still not enough.

We can approximate further, replacing complicated equations and algorithms with dice rolls and a central conflict resolution engine, but now we've already made a decision; we've decided that all conflicts are resolved the same way, perhaps we've decided to use a linear probability D20 system, or a weighted probability D10 or D6 dice pool system. Perhaps conflict resolution is contested by another die or dice pool, perhaps it's resisted by a static difficulty, or perhaps the difficulty is determined by your own traits, but you're making statements about how the world works.

In the real world, it's hard to say where the line between skill and talent goes, in fact we've argued about it for hundreds of years, but the relative and undefined is useless for the purposes of the absolute of a mathematical system, so we can approximate further; decide upon a delineation between natural characteristics and skills, a number of skills or attributes or whatever you call them, specific equations for calculating them and advancing them. Perhaps they're a product of your attributes, perhaps they're separate and combined, perhaps you need Melee to learn every weapon in the world, perhaps there is a separate skill for every one of them.

This process of approximation can and will continue ad infinitum, because reality is fucking useless. You can't create a system that copies reality very well - not without the aid of super-computers or complete freeform anyways, because due to the approximation and the nature of absolutes in mathematics, eventually your system will start producing stupid input, whether that stupid input is that a desert eagle is two successes away from being as deadly as a sniper rifle or whether social influence becomes two islands of opinion that shoot invisible mind-rays at each other until A L L R E S I S T A N C E H A S B E E N C R U S H E D.
 
Furogepsertes, the Mining Boars
Demon of the First Circle
Progeny of the Sound that Sunders

A great swine roots at the earth, leaving vast wounds in the earth. Piggish eyes burn with blue-white fire; its six legs leave burned-in hoofprints on grass and sandstone. It has diamond-tipped tusks, and its skin is covered in great reptilian scales of iron and brass and other metals that men make armour from. Sometimes it vanishes into the ground, tearing out boar-holes and devouring entire seams of ores. Earth elementals detest its presence, as do the wood elementals whose forests catch fire from the heat that radiates off the beast. And there, behind it, come twenty more; a vast hungry brood who lay waste to mountains and ruin fields in their search for the treasures of the earth.

As the marottes are to earth-moving and construction, so the furogepsertes are to mining and the pursuit of precious metals. One mining boar will work day and night to tear up and break the earth, doing the work of ten or twenty men. Within its prodigious gut its inner fires burn off slag and refine ore. Mining boars have a brutish and simple sense of humour, helped by their habitual drunkenness - for they sup upon the cheap swills of Hell and Creation alike with full relish. Where a mortal swine can sniff out truffles, a furogepsertes can smell veins of gold or silver from a mile away and will stop at nothing to dig it up and devour it - even if precious metals pass through their digestive tract untouched. When they lack such delicacies, they dig out vast open cast mines for limestone or basalt or other stones that they can sell to acquire the delicacies they wish.

The mining boars are much like the swine of Creation in how they spawn their litters. They are social demons who dote upon their offspring, and a couple who enter Creation will if left unattended produce a vast brood who will tear apart the landscape and infuriate elementals for tens of miles around. Their metal skin makes them largely immune to the bows and arrows of Creation, but the inside of their mouths are unprotected. Under their scaled skin, their flesh is surprisingly succulent and in the hell from whence they came there are breeds of demon who pit themselves against these destructive beasts for the thrill of the hunt and the feast afterwards.

Summoning: (Obscurity 2/4) Sorcerers who call on the mining boars frequently do so to ravage the landscape, if they care not about the natural harmonies and geomancy of Creation. These demons seldom resist binding if they are offered the chance to dig through new landscapes, and many demonologists note that they are an amiable breed. Such friendliness ignores the risk that an ill-educated demonologist flirts with, for if a sorcerer summons a pregnant sow or has male and female furogepsertes in close proximity then unbound newborn demons will result. Other sorcerers use them as living siege weapons, because a mining boar can undermine a wall or simply charge through a barred castle gate. Much like other base demons, the furogepsertes are naturally material, and they do not even know the Dematerialise Charm. They gain a point of Limit for each day that they are prevented from digging for delicacies, or failing that the are not permitted to drink their fill of alcohol (regardless of the quality). They can escape into Creation when a wild pig accidentally exposes a mineral vein, possessing the natural animal as it swells into its form.
 
ManusDomine said:
I think you misunderstand what I'm saying...
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Clearly somebody's misunderstanding somebody. Let me try to summarise. If the problem's on my end, hopefully this will make its nature clear.

If I understood your first post in this chain correctly, you said that because attempts at modelling reality are always coloured by a worldview, it's best to embrace a specific worldview and explicitly build towards it.

I responded that I don't think embracing a specific worldview is always the way to go; sometimes trying to model reality results in better mechanics.

Then you repeated your first post in more detail, with a couple of examples of how attempts at realism can fail.

Fair summary?

If so, here's what I was trying to say:

The issues which cause stupid results to arise from "realistic" systems are still present in explicitly "ideological" ones. Especially since, just as no realistic system is ever free of ideology, no ideological system is ever free of reality.

Sometimes, the best way to manage the inherent issues of game design is to try for realism.
 
RedV said:
That all said, I really like the Soul Society to Exalted conversion.

I do think that Soul Reapers should by default be no 'different' from other Gods except taht they have a required Panoply in their Zanpakuto and they don't require prayer- maybe they feed on the gratitude of the Dead they release, or maybe the Unconquered Sun tithes a certain amount of Salary by default to all Soul Reapers making them not need to live on prayer.
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It seems to me it doesn't need to be that complicated. Take some exceptional ghosts, equip them with a soulsteel artifact(as per 3E), and have them develop their own evocation lines while learning a 'standard' set of ghost martial arts.

That's mostly functional within the rules as is, though for Hueco Mundo...I think brute forcing the themes is unnecessary, the Underworld is itself a sufficient depiction of horrible afterlife. Just make the Soul Society basically a gated community within the Underworld(which would be simple to implement if you had some benevolent superghosts deciding that they need some goddamned law and order down here rather than becoming Deathlords), or even a pocket dimension resting over the Underworld much like Yu Shan rests over Creation?
 
veekie said:
It seems to me it doesn't need to be that complicated. Take some exceptional ghosts, equip them with a soulsteel artifact(as per 3E), and have them develop their own evocation lines while learning a 'standard' set of ghost martial arts.

That's mostly functional within the rules as is, though for Hueco Mundo...I think brute forcing the themes is unnecessary, the Underworld is itself a sufficient depiction of horrible afterlife. Just make the Soul Society basically a gated community within the Underworld(which would be simple to implement if you had some benevolent superghosts deciding that they need some goddamned law and order down here rather than becoming Deathlords), or even a pocket dimension resting over the Underworld much like Yu Shan rests over Creation?
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Nah, not even that much.

Don't port Soul Society directly into Exalted. Just build some of its features into Sijan. Have Sijan send exorcist-ghosts to hunt down ghosts in the Scavenger Lands who act improperly by their standards as ancestors (of course, they only do that for societies who properly honour their ancestors in the first place). Have the Sijanese Black Guard trained with the use of ghostblades made from bone ash and china, a tradition dating all the way back to the High First Age. Have them fight against spectres and other ghosts lost to Oblivion. Stuff like that - don't port things exactly, but take some of the spirit of things.

(and then also give Sijan lineages of Dragons of Another Colour descended from the Deliberative's Gens who were tasked with watching over the Underworld, who totally aren't Abhorsens, oh no).
 
Or give them to Sijan's underworld reflection even! Sijan's ghost-reflection is pretty powerful, so like it's deathly reflection can totally be a stagnated society ruled by old ancestor-ghosts and defended by the Black Guard of the Sijanese Court.
 
ManusDomine said:
Or give them to Sijan's underworld reflection even! Sijan's ghost-reflection is pretty powerful, so like it's deathly reflection can totally be a stagnated society ruled by old ancestor-ghosts and defended by the Black Guard of the Sijanese Court.
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Oh yeah that definitely can work, though I suspect it needs some kind of equivalent to OMG to work in the indefinite long term...it works well enough.

Incidentally, would it be plausible for some of the elder solar ghosts of the Usurpation to stick around, take one look at the Underworld, and think "fuck this shit needs to be ORGANIZED"?
 
ManusDomine said:
Or give them to Sijan's underworld reflection even! Sijan's ghost-reflection is pretty powerful, so like it's deathly reflection can totally be a stagnated society ruled by old ancestor-ghosts and defended by the Black Guard of the Sijanese Court.
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Oh, that was what I was talking about. I can't remember how canonical it is, but I integrate Sijan. Politically, there is just Sijan - one polity, across two realms. Where you can't fill dead man's shoes to get promoted because the dead men don't stop wearing them.
 
veekie said:
Oh yeah that definitely can work, though I suspect it needs some kind of equivalent to OMG to work in the indefinite long term...it works well enough.

Incidentally, would it be plausible for some of the elder solar ghosts of the Usurpation to stick around, take one look at the Underworld, and think "fuck this shit needs to be ORGANIZED"?
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It doesn't really need one, Sijan has the institutional might of an entire city providing prayer, resources and strength to them in the underworld and history upon history of ghosts to support them, as well as a strong incentive for any Abyssal that isn't a hardcore Neverborn-believer to ally with them.
EarthScorpion said:
Oh, that was what I was talking about. I can't remember how canonical it is, but I integrate Sijan. Politically, there is just Sijan - one polity, across two realms. Where you can't fill dead man's shoes to get promoted because the dead men don't stop wearing them.
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It's not very canonical but you know we both do it. :V
 
veekie said:
It seems to me it doesn't need to be that complicated. Take some exceptional ghosts, equip them with a soulsteel artifact(as per 3E), and have them develop their own evocation lines while learning a 'standard' set of ghost martial arts.
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I don't like the ghost solution because Ghosts are fundamentally anchored to their intimacies and past in a way that Soul Reapers aren't. Having them as gods (who transcend the state of being bound to their intimacies, or the initial ghost state) represents that better, I think.

Panoply Spirit charms also represent what Shinigami can do much better than what canonical ghosts can, and aren't as boring as ghost Arcanoi and powers to be frank.

Having this operation set up in Sijan as a local thing is a good idea, and I'll probably implement it once I get a look at Sijan's writeup. Where is Sijan ? In corebook or Compasses?
 
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Maugan Ra said:
Soul Reapers are totally anchored to their intimacies.

They've just turned those intimacies into magical swords with which to cleanse the impure.
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Some of them, sure, but don't the majority of residents in Soul Society forget their lives entirely? Similarly, their swords don't appear to be linked to any specific intimacy, unlike Hollows.

Like, for each hollow we can see strong and defining attachments like 'comrades' (Halibel) or 'power' (Grimmjow). Orihime's brother becomes a hollow due to excessive attachment. But that's not as visible in Soul Reapers- are Hitsugaya or Yoruichi, for instance, anchored to any specific intimacy? It doesn't appear like they need to be like that to exist, whereas Hollows need to be obsessed with an Intimacy to form.

So classing both as the same type of being sounds weird to me, because they fundamentally aren't. Like, I'm not disputing that Soul Reapers have Intimacies. But the core of their being isn't "beings anchored to intimacies who purify the dead". It's more like "the overseers and enforcers of purifying the dead", which intuitively fits more as Gods to me.
 
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RedV said:
Some of them, sure, but don't the majority of residents in Soul Society forget their lives entirely? Similarly, their swords don't appear to be linked to any specific intimacy, unlike Hollows.

Like, for each hollow we can see strong and defining attachments like 'comrades' (Halibel) or 'power' (Grimmjow). Orihime's brother becomes a hollow due to excessive attachment. But that's not as visible in Soul Reapers- are Hitsugaya or Yoruichi, for instance, anchored to any specific intimacy? It doesn't appear like they need to be like that to exist, whereas Hollows need to be obsessed with an Intimacy to form.

So classing both as the same type of being sounds weird to me, because they fundamentally aren't. Like, I'm not disputing that Soul Reapers have Intimacies. But the core of their being isn't "beings anchored to intimacies who purify the dead". It's more like "the overseers and enforcers of purifying the dead", which intuitively fits more as Gods to me.
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Making the swords from psuedo-soulsteel refined from the mixed intimacies of the ghost in question could work pretty well.
 
Gamerlord said:
Making the swords from psuedo-soulsteel refined from the mixed intimacies of the ghost in question could work pretty well.
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I'm fond of the idea of modelling them as Panoply Charms if we have Soul Reapers as Spirits myself. If not then yeah, having them as Artifacts is a good choice.
 
RedV said:
Some of them, sure, but don't the majority of residents in Soul Society forget their lives entirely? Similarly, their swords don't appear to be linked to any specific intimacy, unlike Hollows.

Like, for each hollow we can see strong and defining attachments like 'comrades' (Halibel) or 'power' (Grimmjow). Orihime's brother becomes a hollow due to excessive attachment. But that's not as visible in Soul Reapers- are Hitsugaya or Yoruichi, for instance, anchored to any specific intimacy? It doesn't appear like they need to be like that to exist, whereas Hollows need to be obsessed with an Intimacy to form.

So classing both as the same type of being sounds weird to me, because they fundamentally aren't. Like, I'm not disputing that Soul Reapers have Intimacies. But the core of their being isn't "beings anchored to intimacies who purify the dead". It's more like "the overseers and enforcers of purifying the dead", which intuitively fits more as Gods to me.
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Oh we'd definitely need to change the details of the setting a little to make it work. I'm just referring to the fact that Zanpakuto are blank swords given individual personality and power through the unique imprint of their wielder's soul. Zangetsu is basically all of Ichigo's more violent and headstrong instincts solidified into the form of a sword.
 
Amusingly this model works exceptionally well with @EarthScorpion's model of the Underworld; the captains are fat on power because they've been fed the tithes of those they command and the prayers of living Sijan, while Yamamoto is so powerful because he supped at the hatred of dead titans and keep the fire that wants to devour Creation entrapped in his sword, and becomes a raging demon of fire when he unleashes it.
 
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